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ARAUJO DE AZAVEDO

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HIS TRANSLATIONS OF

ENGLISH POEMS.

It would be unjust to close this History of Portuguese Poetry, without recording the name of Araujo de Azavedo, minister for foreign affairs in Lisbon, a writer of talent and learning, and a statesman to whom his country and its government is much indebted. His excellent translations of Dryden's Alexander's Feast, some of Gray's Odes, and the Elegy in a Country Church-yard, are truly valuable acquisitions to the national literature of Portugal. His object in making these translations was to direct the attention of his poetical contemporaries to the hitherto unexplored side of the Portuguese Parnassus; and it may be expected that genius will readily follow the tract of such a guide.*

Que alli mesmo grosso fruto

Colhe Saxe entre os Soldados,
Porque em minado reducto

Fez voar despedaçados

Dez mil homens n'hum minuto.

* These translations are anonymously printed, and have never been regularly published. The design with which they are written, renders them, however, the more deserving of being known, since, according to the express declaration of the author, their object is, -"to counteract the too great predilection of the Portuguese nation for languishing pastoral poetry." The commencement of the translation of Alexander's Feast, shall now close the poetic portion of this selection of Portuguese extracts :

Era a festa Real, que ao bellicozo

Macedonio, da Persia glorioso

Vencedor acclamava.

CHAP. III.

HISTORY OF PORTUGUESE ELOQUENCE, CRITICISM, AND RHETORIC, DURING THIS PERIOD.

Further Decline of Portuguese Eloquence.

Before it was possible for any thing like true eloquence to find a place in Portuguese literature, public spirit had to revive from that state of feebleness and apathy into which it had been plunged by the rapid decline of Portugal from the pinnacle of national glory. It was indispensable that a time should return in which the human mind might move with somewhat more freedom in the trammels of ecclesiastical tyranny. The nation had to become once more capable of contemplating great objects. The national taste was to be reclaimed from the affectation of pompous phraseology, and it was necessary that the spirit of philosophy should be allowed to make suitable approaches towards the

Excelso o Eroe brilhava

No solio majestozo.

Valentes Pares seus o rodeavaõ

Que de rosas e murta a frente ornavaō

(Como ao valor compete se croavaõ.)
Thais mostrava ao regio lado airoza,
Qual outra oriental florente esposa,

Juventude e beldade radioza.

Feliz, feliz donzella!

Ninguem, se naõ o Eroe,

Ninguem, se nao o Eroe,

Ninguem, se nao o Eroe merece a bella.

spirit of poetry. But these, and all the other conditions requisite for the revival of polite prose in Portugal, were never more decidedly wanting than precisely at the period when the introduction of French manners seemed likely to infuse a French taste into the national literature. But reckoning from the latter end of the seventeenth century, the imitation of French taste had operated for a considerable time, and yet had influenced only the forms of social life. Its presence in Portuguese literature, was scarcely perceptible. It has already been shewn that during the first half of the eighteenth century, Portuguese poetry, even in the hands of the few poets who were not unwilling to learn elegance from the French, continued subject to the style of the Gongorists and Marinists. Of course still less was it to be expected that Portuguese writers should be capable of imitating the polite prose of the French, since such an imitation would pre-suppose a cultivation of the understanding which at that time was not practicable in Portugal. The French taste in so far as it really found admission into Portugal, doubtless contributed at first, as about the same time its adoption did in Germany, to repress the loftier style of eloquence, for the language became so corrupted by foreign words and phrases, that it was difficult for the prose writer to know what tract it was proper to follow. The poet might, if he pleased, still adhere to the style of the sixteenth century; for his language was not like that of prose composition, subject to the laws of fashion. But no author could attempt classic prose, in the language of the sixteenth

century, without encountering the risk of being regarded as a pedant by his contemporaries; and if he wished to follow the fashion, he was obliged to disfigure the language in which he wrote.

A few works of research which were written during the first half of the eighteenth century, are, with the exception of books of devotion, almost the only compositions which still preserved a kind of national prose style in Portuguese literature. Barbosa Machado's great national Dictionary of Learned Men, is not written without rhetorical care. The author wished to express himself with correctness and elegance, particularly where he uses the language of panegyric, but even then he could not avoid frigid and pompous phraseology; and some phrases, which he seems to have admired, are constantly recurring in the work; as for example when he calls a poet "one of the most melodious swans of the Portuguese Parnassus," without considering that Parnassus is neither a river nor a pond. A few affected metaphors were the only recognized beauties of prose composition at this period in Portugal. Didactic prose could no longer exist when the philosophic and scientific cultivation of the Portuguese became daily more abridged, and was almost limited to the small remnant which was taught in the cloisters and the colleges of the Jesuits. The lectures which under these circumstances were delivered in the academies, were considered to have sufficiently fulfilled their objects if they did not lull the auditors to sleep. The art of historical composition was now completely extinguished in Portugal.

NEW CULTIVATION OF ELOQUENCE

CLASSICAL PROSE AUTHORS STILL WANTING IN MODERN PORTUGUESE LITERATURE.

In the second half, and more especially during the last thirty years of the eighteenth century, the spirit of improvement was awakened, and began to diffuse itself into every department of Portuguese eloquence. The admirable clearness, precision and facility of the French prose, has at length exercised an advantageous influence on the Portuguese. Without enforcing with pedantic rigour the restoration of all the old forms of the sixteenth century, the best Portuguese authors now endeavour to write their mother tongue with purity, and at the same time to satisfy the new wants created by the progress of time and the spirit of the age. The praiseworthy diligence which the Portuguese now manifest in collecting scientific knowledge of every kind, and in republishing the works of their early authors, appears, however, to have operated indirectly to the prejudice of eloquence, for among the men of talent, to whom Portugal is indebted for her regeneration, none have yet distinguished themselves in prose composition. But the Portuguese have had so many things to retrieve, that they have scarcely had time to devote particular attention to the rhetorical form of didactic works. An effort to avoid the bad taste of the preceding age, and upon the whole to cultivate a clear and dignified form of expression, is perceptible in most of the modern treatises of the Portuguese. Empty bombast has given place to the language of reason. The Portuguese nation have

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